


The Tale Of Destiel

by heart_break_station



Series: The Tale Of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo [1]
Category: Supernatural, destiel - Fandom, the tale of Despereaux
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:01:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 7,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23534977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heart_break_station/pseuds/heart_break_station
Summary: *none of these characters are my own. This is also HEAVILY based on the book ‘the tale of Despereaux‘ by Kate DiCamillo. I don’t claim to own any of it. All I’m doing is taking her book and putting the supernatural characters in it*This story follows the adventures of a young mouse named Dean Winchester, as he sets out on his quest to rescue a beautiful human prince from the rats.
Relationships: Brother - Relationship, Friends - Relationship, Son - Relationship
Series: The Tale Of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1693705
Kudos: 1





	1. the last one

The story begins within the walls of a castle. With the birth of a mouse. A small mouse. The last mouse born to his parents and the only one if his litter to be born alive.   
“Where are my babies?” said the exhausted mother when the ordeal was through. “Show me my babies”.   
The father mouse held one small mouse up high.   
“There is only this one” he said “the others are dead”.   
“Oh no, just the one mouse baby?”  
“Just the one. Will you name him?”  
“All is that work for nothing” said the mother. She sighed. “It is so sad. It is such a disappointment”.   
She was a French mouse who has arrived at the castle long ago in the luggage of a visiting French diplomat.   
“Disappointment” was one of her favorite words. She used it often.   
“Will you name him?” repeated the father.   
“Will I name him? Will I name him? Of course, I will name him, but he will only die like the others. Oh, so sad. Oh, such a tragedy.”  
The mouse mother held a handkerchief to her nose and then waved it in front of her face. She sniffed. “I will name him. Yes. I will name him Dean, for all the sadness, for the many dispares in this place. Now, where’s my mirror?”  
Her husband handed her a small shard of mirror. The mouse mother, whose name was Mary, looked at her reflection and gasped aloud. “Sam” she said to one of her sons “get for me my makeup bag. My eyes are a fright.”  
While Mary touched up her eye makeup the father mouse put Dean down on a bed made of blanket scraps.   
The April sun, weak but determined, shone through the castle window and from there squeezed itself through a small hole in the wall and placed one golden finger on the little mouse.   
The other, older kids children gathered around to stare at Dean.   
“His eyes are too green” said his sister Charlie “those are the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen.”  
“Look”, said a brother named Adam, “his face is covered in dots.”   
It’s true. Deans face was covered with ‘dots’.   
He was staring at the sun reflecting off his mother’s mirror. The light was was shinning onto the ceiling in an oval of brilliance, and he was smiling up at the sight.   
“There’s something wrong with him,” said the father.   
“Leave him alone”.   
Deans brothers and sisters stepped back, away from the new mouse.   
“This is the last” proclaimed Mary from her bed.   
“I will have no more mouse babies. They are such a disappointment. They are hard on my beauty. The ruin, for me, my looks. This is the last one. No more.”  
“The last one,” said the father “and he’ll be dead soon. He can’t live. Not with eyes like that.”

But reader, he did live.   
This is his story.


	2. such a disappointment

Dean Winchester lived.   
But his existence was cause for much speculation in the mouse community.   
“He’s the oddest mouse I’ve ever seen,” said his aunt “it’s ridiculous. No mouse has ever, ever been this odd. Not even a Winchester”.   
She looked at Dean through narrowed eyes as if she expected him to disappear entirely. “No mouse,” she said “ever.”  
Dean, his tail wrapped around his feet, stared back at her.   
“Those are some bright eyes he’s got too,” observes his uncle “they look more like snakes eyes, if you ask me.”  
“They are obscenely green eyes” said his aunt.   
Dean blinked.   
His aunt gasp.   
“They say he was born with his eyes open,” whispered his uncle.   
Dean stares hard at his uncle.   
“Impossible,” said his aunt “no mouse, no matter how small or large, is ever born with his eyes open. It’s simply not done.”   
“His pa. John, says he’s not well” says Dean’s uncle.   
Dean sneezed.   
He said nothing in defense of himself. How could he? Everything his aunt and uncle said was true. He did ever oddly green eyes. And he was born with them open. And he was sickly. He coughed and sneezed so often that he carried a handkerchief in one of his paws at all times. He ran temperatures. He fainted at loud noises. Most alarming of all, he showed no interest in things a mouse should know interest in.   
Not to mention the large fingerprint on his shoulder.   
He did not think constantly of food. He was not intent on tracking down every crumb. While his larger, older siblings ate. Dean stood with his head down. Standing very still.   
“Do you hear that sweet sound?” he asked.   
“I hear the sound of cake crumbs falling out of people’s mouths and hitting the floor” said his brother Sam “that’s what I hear.”  
“No....” said Dean. “It’s something else. It sounds like.... um.... honey.”  
“You might have bright eyes” said Sam “but you’d ears are most certainly not attached to your brain. You don’t hear honey. You smell honey. Wen there’s honey to smell. Which, there isn’t.”  
“Son!” barked Dean’s father “snap to it. Get your heat out of the clouds and hunt fir crumbs.”  
“Please,” said his mother “look for crumbs. Eat them to make your mama happy. You are such a skinny mouse. You are a disappointment to your mama.”  
“Sorry,” said Dean. He lowered his head more and began to sniff the castle floor.   
But reader, he was not smelling.   
He was looking, with his odd eyes, for the sweet sound of honey. That no other mouse could hear.


	3. once upon a time

Dean’s siblings tried to educate him in the ways of being a mouse. His brother Sam took him on a tour of the castle to demonstrate the art of scurrying.   
“Move sure to side,” instructed Sam, scrabbling across the waxed castle floor. “Look over yo or shoulder all the time, first to the right, then to the left. Don’t stop for anything.”  
But Dean wasn’t listening to Sam. He was staring at the light pouring in through the stain glass windows of the castle. He stood on his hind legs and held his handkerchief over his heart and stared up, up, up into the brilliant light.   
“Sam,” he said “what is this thing? What are all these colors? Are we in heaven?”  
“Cripes!” shouted Sam from a far corner. “Don’t stand there in the middle of the floor talking about heaven. Move! You’re a mouse, not a man. You’ve got to scurry.”  
“What?” said Dean still staring at the light. But Sam was gone.   
He had, like a good mouse, disappeared into a hole in the molding.   
Dean’s sister Charlie took him into the castle library, where the light cane streaming through tall, high windows and landed on the floor in bright yellow patches.   
“Here,” said Charlie “follow me, small brother, and I will instruct you on the fine points of how to nibble paper.”  
Charlie scurried up a chair and from there hopped onto a table on which sat a huge, open book.  
“This way, small brother,” she said as she crawled onto the pages of the book.   
And Dean followed her from the chair, to the table, to the page.   
“Now then,” said Charlie “this glue, here, is tasty, and the paper edges are crunchy and yummy, like so”. She nibbled on the edge of a page and then looked over at Dean.   
“You try,” she said “first a bite of some glue then follow it with a crunch of the paper. And those squiggles. They are very tasty. “  
Dean looked down at the book, and something remarkable happened. The marks on the page, the ‘squiggles’ as Charlie referred to them as, rearranged themselves into words, and the worlds spelled out a delicious and wonderful phrase: once upon a time.   
“Once upon a time” whispered Dean.   
“What?” said Charlie.   
“Nothing” said Dean.   
“Eat.” said Charlie.   
“I couldn’t possibly” said Dean backing away from the book.   
“Why?”  
“Umm” said Dean “it would ruin the story.”  
“The story? What story?” Charlie stared at him. A piece of paper trembling at the end of one of her indignant whiskers.   
“It’s just like pa said when you were born. Something is not right with you.”  
She turned and scurried from the library to tell her parents about the latest disappointment.   
Dean waited until she was gone, and then he reached out and, with one paw, touched the lovely words.   
Once upon a time.   
She shivered. He sneezed. He blew his nose into his handkerchief.   
“Once upon a time,” he said aloud, relishing the sound. And then, tracing each word with his paw, he read the story of a beautiful prince and the brave knight who serves and honors her.   
Dean did not know it, but he would need, very soon, to be brave himself. 

Have I mentioned that beneath the castle there was a dungeon? In the dungeon, there were rats. Large rats. Mean rats.   
Dean was destined to meet those rats.   
Reader, you must know that an interesting fate (sometimes involving rats, sometimes not) awaits almost everyone, mouse or man, who does not conform.


	4. enter the prince

Dean’s brothers and sisters soon abandoned the thankless task of trying to educate him in the ways of being a mouse.   
And so Dean was free.   
He spent his days as he wanted: he wandered through the rooms of the castle, staring dreamily at the light streaming in through the stained glass windows. He went to the library and read over and over again the story of the fair prince and the knight who rescued him. And he discovered, finally, the source of the honey sweet sound.   
The sound was music.   
The sound was the king playing his guitar and singing to his son, the prince, every night before he fell asleep.   
Hidden in a hole in the wall of the princes bed room, the mouse listened with all of his heart. The sound of the king’s music made Dean’s soul grow large and light inside of him.   
“Oh” he said “it sounds like heaven. It smells like honey.”  
He stuck his left ear out of the hole in the wall so that he could hear the music better, and then he stuck his right ear out so he could hear better still. And it wasn’t long before one if his paws followed his head and then another paw, and then, without any real planning on Dean’s part, the whole of him was on display, all in an effort to get closer to the music.   
Now, while Dean did not indulge in many of the normal behaviors of mice, he did adhere to one of the most basic and elemental of all mice rules: do not ever, under any circumstances, reveal yourself to humans.   
But... the music, the music. The music made him lose his head and act against the few small mouse instincts he was in possession of, and because of this he revealed himself; and in no time at all, he was spied by the sharp eyed prince.   
“Oh, papa” he said “look a mouse.”  
The king stopped singing. He squinted. The king was nearsighted: that is, anything that was not right in front of his eyes was very difficult for him to see.   
“Where?” said the king.   
“There,” said he prince. He pointed.   
“That. My dear Castiel, is a bug, not a mouse. It is much to small to be a mouse.”  
“No, no. It’s a mouse.”  
“A bug,” said the king, who liked to be right.   
“A mouse,” said the prince, who knew he was right.   
As for Dean, he was beginning to realize that he had made a grave error. He trembled. He shook. He sneezed he considered fainting.   
“He’s frightened,” said the prince “look, he’s so afraid he’s shaking. I think he was listening to the music. Play something, papa.”   
“A king okay something for a bug?” the king said wrinkling his forehead, “is that proper do you think? Wouldn’t that make this into some kind of topsy-turvy, wrong headed world if a king played music for a bug?”  
“Papa, I told you, he’s a mouse” said he prince, “please?”  
“Oh, well, if it will make you happy. I, the king, will play music for a bug.”  
“A mouse” corrected the prince.   
The king adjusted his heavy gold crown. He cleared his throat. He strummed the guitar and started to sing a song about stardust. The song was as sweet as light shining through stain-glass windows, as as captivating as the story in the book.   
Dean forgot all his fear. He only wanted to hear the music.   
He crept closer and then closer still, until, reader, he was sitting right at the foot of the king.


	5. what adam saw

The prince looked down at Dean. He smiled at him. And while his father played another song, a song about the deep purple falling oner sleepy garden wall, the prince reached out and touched the top of the mouses head.   
Dean stared up at her in window. The prince, he decided, looked just like the male version the picture of the fair maiden in the book in the library. The prince smiled at Dean again, and this time, dean smiled back. And then, something incredible happened: the mouse fell in love.   
Reader, you may ask this question; in face, you must ask this question: is it ridiculous for a very small, sickly, bright eyed mouse to fall in love with a beautiful human prince named Castiel?   
The answer is.... yes. Of course, it’s ridiculous.   
Love is ridiculous.   
But lone is also wonderful. And powerful. And Dean’s love for the prince would prove, in time, to be all of these things: powerful, wonderful, and ridiculous.   
“You’re so sweet,” said the prince to Dean.   
“You’re so tiny”.  
As Dean looked up at her adoringly, Adam happened to scurry past the prince’s to, moving his heat left to right, right to left, back and forth.   
“Oh no!” said Adam. He stopped. He stared into the prince’s took. His whiskeys became as tight as bowstrings.   
What Adam saw was Dean Winchester sitting still the foot of the king. What Adam saw was the prince touching the top of his brothers head.   
“Oh no!” shouted Adam again, “oh no! He’s nuts! He’s a goner!”  
And, executing a classic scurry, Adam went off to tell his father, John Winchester, the terrible, unbelievable news of what he had just seen.


	6. this drum

“He cannot, he simply cannot be my son,” John said. He clutched his whiskers with his front paws and shook his head from side to side in despair.   
“Of course he is good son,” said Mary. “Whey fo you mean he is not your son? This is a ridiculous statement. Why must you always make ridiculous statements?”   
“You,” said John, “this is your fault. The French blood in him has made him crazy.”  
“C’est moi?” said Mary, “c’est moi? Why must it always be I who takes the blame? If your son is such the disappointment, it is as much your fault as mine.”  
“Something must be done,” said John. He pulled on a whisker so hard that it came loose. He waved the whisker over his head. He pointed it at his wife. “He will be the end of us all,” he shouted, “sitting at the food of a human king. Unbelievable! Unthinkable!”  
“Oh, so dramatic,” said Mary. She head out one paw and studied her painted nails. “He is a small mouse. How much of the harm can he do?”  
“If there is one thing I have learned in this world,” said John, “it is that mice must act like mice or else there is bound to be trouble. I will call a special meeting of the Mouse Council. Together, we will decide what must be done.”  
“Oh,” said Mary, “ you and this council of the mouse. It is a waste of the time in my opinion.”  
“Don’t you understand?” shouted Lester. “He must be punished. He must be brought up before the tribunal.”  
He pushed past her and dug furiously through a pile of paper scraps, until he uncovered a thimble with a piece of leather stretched across its open end.   
“Oh, please,” said Mary. She covered her ears. “Not this drum of the council of the mouse.”  
“Yes,” said John, “the drum.” He held it up high above his head, first to the north and then ti the south, and then to the East and the west. He lowered it and turned his back to his wife and closed his eyes and took a deep breath and began to beat the drum slowly, one long beat with his tail, two staccato beats with his paws.   
Boom. Tat-tat. Boom. Tat-tat. Boom. Tat-tat.   
The rhythm of the drum was a signal for the members of the Mouse Council.   
Boom. Tat-tat. Boom. Tat-tat. Boom.  
The beating of the drum let them know that an important decision would have to be made, one that affected the safety and well-being of the entire mouse community.   
Boom. Tat-tat. Boom. Tat-tat. Boom.


	7. a mouse in love

And what was our own favorite member of the mouse community doing while the doing while the sound of the Mouse Council drum echoed through the walls of the castle?   
Reader, I must report that Adam had not seen the worst of it. Dean sat with the prince and the king and listened to song after song. At one point, gently, oh so gently, the prince picked up the mouse in his hand. He cupped him in his palm and scratched his ears.   
“You have lovely eyes,” the prince said to him. “They are like small pieces of emerald.”  
Dean thought that he might faint with the pleasure referring to his eyes as small and lonely. He laid his tail against the prince’s wrist to steady himself and he felt the prince’s pulse, the pounding of his heart, and his own heart immediately took up the rhythm of his.   
“Papa,” the prince said when the music was over, “I am going to keep this mouse. We are going to be great friends.”  
The king looked at Dean cupped in his daughters hands. He narrowed his eyes. “A mouse,” he muttered, “a rodent.”  
“What?” said the price.   
“Put it down,” the king commanded.   
“No,” said the prince, who was a person not at all used to being told what to do. “I mean, why should I?”   
“Because I told you to.”  
“But why,” protested the prince.   
“Because it’s a mouse.”  
“I know. I’m the one who told you he was a mouse.”  
“I wasn’t thinking,” said the king.   
“Thinking of what?”  
“Your mother. The queen.”  
“My mother,” said the prince sadly.   
“Mice are rodents,” said the king. He adjusted his crown. “They are related to... ears. You know how we feel about rats. You know of our dark history with rats.”  
The prince shuttered.   
“But papa,” he said, “he is not a rat. He’s a mouse. There’s a difference.”  
“Royalty,” the king said, “has many responsibilities. And one of them is not becoming involved personally even the distant relatives of ones enemies. Put him down, Castiel.”  
The prince put Dean down.   
“Good,” said the king. And then he looked at Dean. “Scat,” he said.   
Dean, however, did not scar. He sat and stared up at the prince.   
The king stamped his foot. “Scat!” he shouted.   
“Papa,” said the prince, “please, don’t be mean to him.”  
And he began to weep.   
Dean, seeing his tears, broke the last of the great, ancient rules of mice. He spoke. To a human.   
“Please,” said Dean, “don’t cry.” He help out his handkerchief to the prince.   
The prince sniffed and leaned down close to him.   
“Do not speak to her!” thundered the king.   
Dean dropped his handkerchief. He backed away from the king.  
“Rodents do not speak to prince’s. We will not have this becoming a topsy-turvy, wrong headed world. There are rules. Scar. Get lost, before my comment sense returns and I have you killed.”  
The king stamped his foot again. Dean found it alarming to have such a big foot brought down with so much force and anger so close to his own small head. He ran toward the hole in the wall.   
But he turned before he entered it. He turned and shouted to the prince. “My name is Dean!”  
“Dean?” he said.   
“I honor you,” shouted Dean.   
“I honor you” was what the knight said to the fair maiden in the story that Dean read every day in the book in the library. Dean had muttered the phrase to himself, but he had never before this evening had occasion to use it when speaking to someone else.   
“Get out of here!” shouted the king, stamping his foot harder still so it seemed as if the whole castle, the very world, were shaking. “Rodents know nothing of honor.”  
Dean ran into the hole and from there he looked out at the prince. He had picked up his handkerchief when he was looking at him... right, directly into his soul.   
“Dean,” he said. He saw his name on the prince’s lips.   
“I honor you,” whispered Dean. “I honor you.”  
He out his paw over his heart. He bowed so low that his whiskers touched the floor.   
He was, alas, a mouse deeply in love.


	8. to the rats

The mouse council, thirteen honored mice and one Most Very Honored Head Mouse, heeded the call of Lester’s dirk and gathered in a small, secret hole of the King’s throne room. The fourteen mice sat around a piece of wood balanced on spools of thread and listened in horror while Dean’s father related the story of what Adam has seen.   
“At the foot of the king,” said John.   
“Her finger right on top of his head,” said John.   
“He was looking up at her, and... it was not in fear.”  
The Mouse Council members listened with their mouths open. They listened with their whiskers drooping and their ears flat against their heads. They listened in dismay and outrage and fear.   
When John finished, there was a silence dismal and deep.   
“Something,” intoned the Most Very Honored Head Mouse, “is wrong that it’s your son. He is not well. This goes beyond his fevers, beyond his large eyes and lack of dull color in them. He is deeply disturbed. His behavior endangers us all. Humans cannot he trusted. We know this to be an indisputable fact. A mouse who consorts with humans, a mouse who would sit right at the foot of a man, a mouse who would allow a human to touch him”— and here, the entire Mouse Council indulged in a collective shiver of disgust— “cannot be trusted. That is the way of the world, our world.”  
“Fellow mice, it is my most fervent hope that Dean has not spoken to these humans. But obviously, we an assume nothing. And this is a time to act, not wonder.”  
John nodded his head in agreement. And the twelve other members of the Mouse Council nodded their heads, too.   
“We have no choice,” said the Head Mouse. “He must go to the dungeon.” He pounded his fisted paw in the table. “He must go to the rats. Immediately. Members of the council, I will now ask you vote. Those in favor of Dean being sent to the dungeon, say ‘aye’.”  
There was a chorus of sad “ayes.”  
“They opposed say ‘nay’.”  
Silence reigned in the room.   
The only noise came from John. He was crying.   
And thirteen mice, ashamed for John, looked away.   
Reader, you can imagine your own father not voting against your being sent to a dungeon full of rats? Can you imagine him not saying one word in your defense?   
Dean’s father welp and the Most Very Honored Head Mouse beat his paw against the table again and said, “Dean Winchester will appear before the mouse community. He well hear of his sins; he will be given a chance to deny them. If he does not deny them, he will be allowed to renounce them so that he may go to the dungeon with a pure heart. Dean Winchester is hereby called to sit with the Mouse Council.   
At least John has the decency to weep at his act of perfidy. Reader, do you know what “perfidy” means? I have a feeling you do, based on the little scene that has just unfolded here. But you should look up the word in your dictionary, just to be sure.


	9. the right question

The Mouse Council sent Adam to collect Dean. And Adam found his brother in the library, standing in top of the great, open book, his tail wrapped tightly around his feet, his small body shivering.   
Dean was reading the story out loud to himself. He was reading from the beginning so that he could get to the end, where the reader was assured that the knight and the fair maiden lived together happily ever.   
Dean wanted to rest those words. Happily ever after. He needed to say them aloud; he needed some assurance that this feeling he had got the prince, this love, would come to a good end. And so he was reading the story as if it were a spell and the words of it, spoken aloud, could make magic happen.   
“See here,” said Adam out loud to himself. He looked at his brother and then looked away. “This is just the kind of thing I’m talking about. This is exactly the kind of thing. What’s he doing here for gods sake? He’s not eating the paper. He’s taking to the paper. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong.”  
“Hey,” he said to Dean.   
Dean kept reading.   
“Hey!” shouted Adam. “Dean! The Mouse Council wants you.”  
“Pardon?” said Dean. He looked up from the book.   
“The Mouse Council has called you to sit with them.”  
“Me?” said Dean.   
“You.”  
“I’m busy right now,” said Dean, and he bent his head again to the open book.   
Adam sighed. “Geez,” he said. “Nothing makes sense to this guy. Nothing. I was right to turn him in. He’s sick.”  
Adam crawled up the chair leg and then hopped onto the book. He sat next to Dean. He tapped him on head once, twice.   
“Hey,” he said. “The Mouse Council isn’t asking. They’re telling. They’re commanding. You have to come with me. Right now.”  
Dean turned to Adam. “Do you know what love is?” he said.   
“Huh?”  
“Love.”  
Adam shook his head. “You’re asking the wrong question,” he said. “The question you should be asking is why the Mouse Council wants to see you.”  
“There is somebody who loves me,” said Dean. “And I love him and that’s the only thing that matters to me.”  
“Somebody who loves you? Somebody who you love? What difference does that make? What matters is that you’re in a lot of trouble with the Mouse Council.”  
“His name,” said Dean, “is Castiel.”  
“What?”  
“Who person who loves me. His name is Castiel.”  
“Oh no,” said Adam, “you’re missing the whole point of everything here. You’re missing the point of being a mouse. You’re missing the point of being called to sit with the Mouse Council. You’ve got to come with me. It’s the law. You’ve been called.”  
Dean sighed. He reached out and touched the words ‘fair maiden’ in the book. He traced them with one paw. And then he put his paw to his mouth.   
“Oh no,” said Adam. “You’re making a fool of yourself. Let’s go.”  
“I honor you,” whispered Dean. “I honor you.”  
And then, reader, he followed Adam over the book and down the chair leg and across the library floor to the waiting Mouse Council. He allowed his brother to lead him to his fate.


	10. good reasons

The entire mouse community, as instructed by the Most Very Honored Head Mouse, has gathered behind the wall of the castle ballroom. The menders of the Mouse Council sat atop three bricks piled high, and spread out before them was every mouse, old and young, foolish and wise, who lived in the castle.   
They were all waiting for Dean.   
“Make way,” said Adam. “Here he is. I’ve got him. Make way.”  
Adam pushed through the crowd of mice.   
Dean club to his brothers tail.   
“There he is,” the mice whisperer. “There he is.”  
“He’s so small.”  
“They say he was born with his eyes open.”  
Some of the mice pulled away from Dean in disgust, and others, thrill seekers, reached out to touch him with a whisker or paw.   
“The prince put a finger on him.”   
“They say he sat at the foot of the king.”  
“It is simply not done!” came the distinct voice of Dean’s aunt.   
“Make way, make way!” shouted Adam. “I have him right here. I have Dean Winchester, who has been called to sit with the Mouse Council.”  
He lead Dean to the front of the room. “Honored members of the Mouse Council,” shouted Adam, “I have brought you Dean Winchester, as you requested, to sit with you.” He looked oner his shoulder at Dean.   
“Let go of me,” Adam said.   
Dean dropped Adam’s tail. He looked up at the members of the Mouse Council. His father met his gaze and then shook his head and looked away. Dean turned and faced the sea of mice.   
“To the dungeon!” a voice cried out. “Straight to the dungeon with him!”  
Dean’s head, which had been full of such delighted phrases as “happily ever after” and “lovely eyes” and “I honor you,” suddenly cleared.   
“Straight to the dungeon!” another voice shouted.   
“Enough,” said the Most Very Honored Head Mouse. “This trial will be conducted in an orderly fashion. We will act civilized.” He cleared his throat. He said to Dean, “son, turn and look at me.”  
Dean turned. He looked up and into the Head Mouse’s eyes. They were dark eyes, deep and sad and frighted. And looking into them, Dean’s heart thudded once, twice.   
“Dean Winchester,” said the Head Mouse.   
“Yes sir,” said Dean.   
“We, the fourteen members of the Mouse Council, have discussed your behavior. First, we will give you a chance to defend yourself against these rumors of your egregious acts. Did you or did you not sit at the foot of the human king?”  
“I did,” said Dean, “but I was listening to the music, sir. I was there to hear the song that the king was singing.”  
“To hear the what?”  
“The song, sir. He was singing a song about the deep purple falling over sleepy garden walls.”  
The Head Mouse shook his head. “Whatever you are talking about is beside the point. The question is this and only this: did you sit at the foot of the human king?”  
“I did, sir.”  
The community of mice shifted their tails and paws and whiskers. They waited.   
“And did you allow the boy human, une prince, to touch you?”  
“His name is Castiel.”  
“Never mind his bane. Did you allow him to touch you?”  
“Yes, sir,” said Dean. “I let him touch me. It felt good.”  
A gasp arose from the assembled mice.   
Dean heard his mothers voice. “Mon Dieu, it is not the end of the world. It was a touch, what of it?”  
“It is simply not done!” came his aunt’s voice from the crowd.   
“To the dungeon,” said a mouse in the front row.   
“Silence!” roared the Most Very Honored Head Mouse. “Silence.” He looked down at Dean.   
“Do you, Dean Winchester, under the sacred, never to be broken rules of conduct for being a mouse?”  
“Yes, sir,” said Dean. He raised his voice. “But.... i broke the rule for good reasons. Because of music. And because of love.”  
“Love!” said the Head Mouse.   
“Oh no,” said Adam, “here we go.”  
“I love him, sir” said Dean.   
“We are not here to talk about love. This trial is my about love. This trial is about you being a mouse,” shouted the Most Very Honored Head Mouse From High stop the bricks, “and not acting like one!!!”  
“Yes, sir,” said Dean. “I know.”  
“No, I don’t think that you do know. And because you do not deny the charges, you most be punished. You are to be sent, as ancient castle mouse law decrees, to the dungeon. You are being sent to the rats.”  
“That’s right!” shouted a mouse in the crowd. “That’s the ticket.”  
The dungeon! The rats! Dean’s small heart sank all the way to the top of his tail. There would be no light in the dungeon. No stained glass windows. No library. No books. There would be no prince Castiel.   
“But first,” said the Most Very Honored Head Mouse, “we will give you a chance to renounce your actions. We will allow you to go to the dungeon with a pure heart.”  
“Renounce?”  
“Repent. Say that you are sorry you sat at the foot of the human king. Say that you are sorry you allowed the human prince to touch you. Say that you regret these actions.”  
Dean felt hot and then cold and then hot again. Renounce him? Renounce the prince?   
“Mon dieu!” shouted his mother. “Son, do not act the fool. Renounce! Repent!”  
“What say you, Dean Winchester?”  
“I say..... I say.... I say.... no” whispered Dean.   
“What?” said the Head Mouse.   
“No,” said Dean. And this time, he did not whisper the word. “I am not sorry. I will not renounce my actions. I lobe him. I love the prince.”  
There was a bellow or collective outrage. The whole of the mouse community surged toward Dean. The move seemed to become one angry body with hundreds of tails and thousands of whiskers and one huge, hungry mouth opening and closing and opening and closing, saying over and over and over again, “to the dungeon. To the dungeon. To the dungeon.”  
The words pounded through Dean’s body with each beat of his heart.   
“Very well,” said the Most Honored Head Mouse.   
“You will die, then, with a black heart. Threadmaster,” he called, “bring out the thread.”  
Dean marveled at his own defiance.   
And then, reader, he fainted.


	11. the threadmaster cometh

When Dean came to, be heard the drum. His father was beating a rhythm that had much more boom and less tat. Together, John and the drum produced an ominous sound they went something like this: boom boom boom tat. Boom boom boom tat.   
“Make way for the thread!” cried a mouse who was pushing a wooden spoon of red thread through the crowd. “Make way for the thread!”  
Boom boom boom tat, went the drum.   
“To the dungeon!” shouted the mice.   
Dean lay on his back, blinking his eyes. How, he wondered, had things gone so terribly wrong? Wasn’t it a good thing to love? In the story in the book, line was a very good thing. Because the knight loves the fair maiden, he was able to rescue her. They lived happily ever after. It said so. In the book. They were the last words on the page. Happily ever after. Dean was certain that he had read exactly those words time and time again.   
Lying on the floor with the drum beating and the mice shouting and the threadmaster calling out, “make way, make way,” Dean had a sudden, chilling thought: had some other mouse eaten the words that spoke the truth? Did the knight and the fair maiden really not live happily ever after?   
Reader, do you believe there is such a thing as happily ever after? Or, like Dean, have you, too, begun to question the possibility of happy endings?   
“Happily ever after,” whispered Dean. “Happily ever after,” he said again as the spool of thread came to a stop besides him.   
“The thread, the thread, the thread,” murmured the mice.   
“I’m sorry,” said the mouse behind the spool, “but I have to ask you to stand up. I have to do my job.”  
Dean got slowly to his feet.   
“On your hind legs, please” said the threadmaster. “It’s the rules.”  
Dean stood on his hind legs.   
“Thank you,” said the mouse. “I appreciate it.”  
While Dean watched, the threadmaster unwound a length of red thread from the spool and tied a loop.   
“Just enough for the neck,” muttered the mouse. “No more, no less. That’s what the last threadmaster thought me: enough thread for the neck.” She looked up at Dean and then back down at the loop of thread. “And you, my friend, have a small neck.”  
The threadmaster raised her arms and put them around Dean’s neck. She leaned in close and Dean smelled celery. He could feel the threadmaster’s breath in his ear as he worked at tightening the thread.   
“Is he beautiful,” the threadmaster whispered.   
“What?” said Dean.   
“Shhh. Is the prince beautiful?”  
“The prince Castiel?”  
“Yes.”  
“He is lovely beyond all imagining,” said Dean.   
“Just right,” the threadmaster said.   
He drew back. He nodded his head. “A lovely prince, just so, like a fairy tale. And you love him, as a knight loves a maiden. You love him with a courtly love, a love that is based on bravery and courtesy and honor and devotion. Just so.”  
“How do you know that?” Dean said “how do you know about fairy tales?”  
“Shhh.” the mouse leaned in close, and Dean smelled celery again, green and alive. “Be brave, friend,” whispered the threadmaster. “Be brave for the prince.” And then she stepped back and turned and shouted, “fellow mice, the thread had been tied. The thread had been knotted.”   
A roar of approval went up from the crown.   
Dean squared his shoulders. He has made a decision. He would do as the threadmaster, Jody, had suggested. He would be brave for the prince.   
Even if (reader, could it be true?) there was no such thing as happily ever after.


	12. adieu

The sound of the drum changes again.   
The final tat disappeared and it became nothing but boom.   
Boom boom boom.   
Boom boom boom.   
Lester used only his tail, bringing it down with great force and seriousness upon the drink.   
The thread master retreated.   
The room full of mice fell silent, expectant, waiting.   
And as Dean stood before them with the red thread around his neck and fourteen members of the Mouse Council perched on the bricks about him, two burly mice came forward. Black pieces of cloth covered their heads. There were slits for their eyes.   
“We,” said the biggest of the two mice, “will escort you to the dungeon.”  
“Dean,” Mary called out. “Ah, my Dean!”  
Dean looked out into the crowd of mice and saw his mother. She was easy to spot. In honor of her youngest mouse broke sent to the dungeon, she had put on a tremendous amount of makeup.   
Each of the hooded mice out a paw on Dean’s shoulder.   
“It’s time,” said the one ok the left, the first hood.   
Mary pushes her way through the crowd. “He is my son,” she said. “I want to have a last word with my son.”  
Dean looked at his mother. He concentrated on standing before her without trembling. He concentrated on not being a disappointment.   
“Please,” said Mary, “what will happen to him? What will happen to my baby?”  
“Ma’am,” said the first good. His voice was deep and slow. “You don’t want to know.”  
“I want to know. I want to know. He is my child. The child of my heart. The last of my mice babies.”  
The hooded mice said nothing.   
“Tell me,” said Mary.   
“The rats,” said the second.   
“Yes. Yes. Oui. The rats. What is them?”  
“The rats will eat him,” said the second good.   
“Ah,” said Mary. “Mon dieu!”  
At the through today being eaten by rats, Dean forgot about being brave. He forgot about not being a disappointment. He felt himself heading into another faint. But his mother, who had an excellent sense of dramatic timing, beat him to it; she executed a beautiful, flawless swoon, landing right at Dean’s feet.   
“Now you’ve done it,” said the first hood.   
“It doesn’t matter,” said the second. “Step over her. We have a job to do. Nobody’s mother is going to stop us. To the dungeon.”  
“To the dungeon,” repeated the first hood, but his voice, so deep and certain a moment ago, now shook a tiny bit. He put a paw on Dean and tugged him forward, and the two hoods and Dean stepped over Mary.   
The crowd parted.   
The mice began again to chant: “to the dungeon. To the dungeon. To the dungeon.”  
The drumbeat continued.   
Boom boom boom. Boom boom boom.   
And Dean was lead away.   
At the last moment, Mary came out of her faint and shouted one word to her child.   
That word, reader, was adieu.   
Do you know the definition of adieu? Don’t bother with a dictionary. I will tell you.   
Adieu is a French word for farewell.   
“Farewell” is not the word that you would like to hear from your mother as you are being led to the dungeon by two oversized mice in black hoods.   
Words that you would like to hear are “take me instead. I will go to the dungeon in my sons place.” There is a great deal of comfort in those words.   
But, reader, there is no comfort in the word “farewell” even if you say it in French. “Farewell” is a word that, in any language, is full of sorrow. It is a word that promises absolutely nothing.


	13. perfidy unlimited

Together, the three mice traveled down, down, down   
The thread around Dean’s neck was tight. He felt as if it was choking him. He tugged at it with one paw.   
“Don’t touch the thread,” barked the second good.   
“Yeah,” echoed the first hood, “Don’t touch the thread.”  
They moved quickly. And whenever Dean slowed, one of the two hoods poked him in the shoulder and told him to keep moving. They went through holes in the wall and down golden stairs. They went past rooms with doors that were closed and doors that were flung wide. The three mice traveled across the marble floors and under heavy believed drapes. They moved through warm patches of sunlight and dark pools of shade.   
This, thought Dean, was the world he was leaving behind, the world that he know and loved. And somewhere in it, the prince was laughing and smiling and clapping his hands to music, unaware of Dean’s fate. That he would not be able to let the prince know what had become of him seemed suddenly unbearable to the mouse.   
“Would it be possible for me to have a last word with the prince?” Dean asked.   
“A word,” said the second hood. “You want a word with a human?”  
“I want to tell him what has happened to me.”  
“Geez,” said the first hood. He stopped and stamped a paw on the floor in frustration. “Cripes. You can’t learn, can you?”  
The voice was terribly familiar to Dean.   
“Sam?” he said.   
“What?” said the first hood irritably.   
Dean shuddered. His own brother was delivering him to the dungeon. His heart stopped beating and shrunk to a small, cold, disbelieving pebble. But then, just as quickly, it leapt alive again, beating with hope.   
“Sam,” Dean said, and he took one of his brothers paws in his own. “Please, let me go. Please. I’m your brother.”  
San rolled his eyes. He took his paw out of Dean’s. “No,” he said. “No way.”  
“Please,” said Dean.   
“No,” said Sam. “Rules are rules.”  
Reader, do you recall the word “perfidy”? As our story progresses, “perfidy” becomes an ever more appropriate word, doesn’t it?   
“Perfidy” was certainly the word that was in Dean’s mind as the mice finally approached the narrow, steep stairs that led to the black hole of the dungeon.   
They stood, the three mice, two with hoods and one without, the contemplated the abyss before them.   
And then Sam stood up ok his hind legs and placed his right paw over his heart. “For the good of the castle mice,” he announced to the darkness, “we deliver this day to the dungeon, a mouse in need of punishment. He is, according to the laws we have established, wearing the red thread of death.”  
“The red thread of death?” repeated Dean in a small voice. “Wearing the red thread of death” was a terrible phrase, but the mouse didn’t have long to consider its implications, because he was suddenly pushed from behind by the hooded mice.   
The push was a strong one, and it sent Dean flying down the stairs into the dungeon. As he tumbled, whisker over tail, through the darkness, there was only two words in his mind. One was “perfidy”. And the other word that he clung to was “Castiel”. Perfidy. Castiel. Perfidy. Castiel. These were the words that pinwheeled through Dean’s mind as his body descended into the darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> *again, I didn’t come up with these characters or this plot I’m simply putting these characters into this plot*
> 
> *1-4 updates weekly*


End file.
